Please note: Classes are always on a Monday night, usually from 7:00 to 8:30 pm. Classes will not always be in the same room. They will either be in Special Collections or in the ITTC (aka the computer training center) on the second floor. Check each class below for its location. Registration is required and will usually start at the beginning of the month before the class is being offered. Call a reference desk at 617-796-1380 to register.

Class: Bare-Bones Genealogy for Beginners: Starting from Scratch

Date: 9 January 2016

Room: Special Collections

Description: The emphasis of this first class of the new year will be on setting up your family history and how to start your research. I will begin by explaining family group sheets and then expand from there. This will not be a computer-based class. You will be introduced to strategies of organization, citing living people as sources, and where to look for more information that you (or someone in your family) may already have. Computer genealogy will be slowly introduced into the mix in February (Mother Nature permitting). Registration is now open. (Limit: 15)

Description: When people start going online to research their family history, the first documents they usually come across are the United States census (generated by the federal government) and birth, marriage, and death records (generated locally). I will discuss these documents in the context of computer-driven research. Some records can be used as proof of a relationship. Others are only signposts toward more reliable information. Tips relating to online research in general will also be incorporated. Registration will be open at the beginning of January. (Limit: 12)

Description: Typically, you begin your family research with the resources closest to you, including your public library. But you shouldn’t stop there. This class is about tracking your ancestors in the towns and cities, counties and states where they actually lived. Here is where fresh discoveries are made, obstacles are broken down, and wonderful stories can be discovered. How do you track down digitized collections, special records, newspaper articles, books, and/or manuscripts that have been generated locally about local people, families, and events? I will discuss how to uncover online the resources available in places you’ve never visited. You will learn how to find libraries and history and genealogy societies relevant to the communities you are researching. You may discover relatives still living there, perhaps some you know nothing about and who may be working on a parallel track in a genealogy quest of their own. Eventually you may decide that there are places you want to actually visit. As you identify the localities you need to search, the focus and the scope of your project may shift and expand — prepare yourself for surprises. Registration will be open at the beginning of February. (Limit: 15)

I always begin the topic of starting a family history with the importance of organization. Your very first step should be deciding where and how you are going to keep the material and the information you gather. Doing this should save you a great deal of time and trouble from the outset. Tracking down ancestors should be fascinating, not frustrating. You may have done a spectacular job researching a particular person, but if you can’t find your material again, your research is useless. Also, there is never enough time to do everything we want accomplish. Time does not need to be wasted searching for needed material buried “somewhere around here.” It’s much more fun discovering new information or new connections.

Organization does not come naturally, at least not to me. I’m trying to keep you from repeating my mistakes. Your first task, before you write down anything, is to figure out how you want to organize the material you accumulate. There are a number of options. If you have never done this before, I have a suggestion. Start small.

Have at least four file folders on hand (though having a few extras may be a wise move). Each file folder represents a family. Not an individual, a family. The first folder would be for material you collect on yourself (as an adult) and your own family. If you are married, your spouse should be there. If you have children, they will be included. The next file should be for your parents and their children. This would include information about youself (as a child), your brothers and sisters (your siblings), and your parents. The next two would be for your parents as children, one for your mother and her family. Another for your father and his family. Your goal will eventually be to list all members of each family, parents and children. Next you will include the birth and marriage dates and places of each family member and the person each married. Then death dates and places as you go back a bit in time. Three generations is a good start. Once you have these down, then you can continue to research backwards, one family and one generation at a time.

Setting up the folders. On a piece of paper write down your name and that of your spouse. Next write the names of your parents. Next write the names of your four grandparents. Make sure you include women’s maiden names if you have them. If you know people further back, then you can include them on your list. If you complete three generations of parents, you now have the beginning of an ancestral chart and line. Put one set of parents on each file folder tab. To the left is an example of the file folder for one set of my great grandparents. It includes names and the years for birth and death of each. I’ve also included places they lived which may expand with future research. You start with names. If you do the last names first in capital letters, they will be easier to find. Later, as you learn more information, you can include dates and places. The dates help you place the family in time, especially as you include more generations. I would file these folders starting with most recent generation first. As you get used to doing this, you may like this system or you may find a system that works better for you.

If you want to work on your spouse’s family, that will be twice the work and twice the time. You will need three more file folders. You can either do your family and then work on those of your spouse or you can work one generation at a time straight across, especially as you get into later generations. Of course, if you can get your spouse involved, he or she can be working on that line while you do yours. You’ll be working together, only on different branches.

Sample of a family group sheet.

You next start pulling together families. You may want some help or a prompt to get you started, especially if you’ve been staring at that blank sheet of paper for awhile. There is a specific form that will be of great help to you. It is known as a family group sheet and will be the key to future research. This sheet is concerned only with one generation of each family. With these you fill out not only the parents, but their children. Here is a link to a horizontal family group sheet which I like to use for file folders. Here is a link to a two page vertical family group sheet, which is good if you are using notebooks. Or you may just prefer one form over the other. There is also an adaptation of the standard family group sheet. It was created for the Irish Genealogy Toolkit, but can be used by anyone, Irish or not. There are two forms that can be printed out. One asks “What do I know about my father’s family?” The other is “What do I know about my mother’s family?” You may be surprised at what you do know and what you don’t. Don’t be surprised if you know only a fraction of the information. This is just a first step. You may be able to fill in names going back to your aunts and uncles, your parents siblings. Dates and places may be another story. Take the family group sheets and put them in the file folders you have created for the parents.

The file folders should work well in the beginning to get you started. It will also help get you thinking in a certain pattern and direction. You start at the beginning with yourself, NOT with some (probably wrong) distant ancestor. You learn to think in terms of families, not just individual ancestors. You use the family group sheet to discover the information you do not have. What do you need to find out.

Eventually you will decide how you want to organize — with file folders, three ringed notebooks, on your computer with genealogy software, out on the Internet’s cloud, or a combination of several of these options. Like I said, there are a lot of choices. Don’t wait too long if you want to switch to computer software or Internet cloud genealogy programs. You don’t want to have too much to transfer. The more you have the less likely the transfer will get done.

If you would like to know more about genealogy software or about organization, you might want to check out an earlier post that I’ve just updated: Beginning Your Family History: First and Most Important — Get Organized. Besides suggesting several books,I have also included links to software evaluations and reviews. There is a learning curve to working with any type of software. I have been working with paper for years and have only just begun to work online. I have software on my computer and am also poking around in Ancestry, MyHeritage, FamilySearch, and FindMyPast. These last four would save my information on the Internet, aka “the cloud”. It takes time, but eventually some of these will provide me with an organized, online place for my research.

I first became aware of ArcaLife when I was looking for a reliable online site that would save a person’s memories and family stories. I thought I had found just the site when I read the first chapter of Matthew and April Helm’s AARP Genealogy Online. Their entire first chapter consisted of instructions on how to use ArcaLife to save memories online. When I went to use it, I couldn’t find it. It had completely vanished.

I did some more research. ArcaLife was originally set up to help individuals and families save their memories, photographs, stories… It purpose was not only to create an online site to store this information, but also to make it possible to create personal archives that could be passed down to future generations. This was an ambitious goal. When I checked Internet Archives Wayback Machine, which takes snapshots of websites on random days, I found there were 55 saves between 3 October 2008 and 3 September 2012. Part of the site was free and part required a subscription. So far I have been unable to find out what happened to ArcaLife; what happened to Digital Estate Corporation, the company that owned it; and most importantly, what happened to all the stories, photos, and archives that were housed there. The moral of this story is to always have a backup whenever you trust your family archives to anything online. Write your stories, collect your photos, scan your papers onto your computer, save them on a flash/usb drive, print them out. If something very bad happens to one, you will have backup.

NEWSPAPERARCHIVE.COM: Read the Fine Print

Kerry Scott at ClueWagon recently did a post entitled “Want a Full Refund on Your NewspaperArchive.com Subscription? Just Ask About Their Charity.” It has me very concerned. She discovered that NewspaperArchive.com was automatically renewing subscriptions and they were doing it for only six months at the same price they had previously used for a full year. She decided not to renew her subscription. She had told them not to automatically renew her when she first subscribed. She had used a credit card that expired during the summer so she wasn’t worried about them accidentally automatically renewing her subscription. She also emailed them in a timely manner telling them she would not be renewing. Sounds like due diligence to me. Not to the company though.

This gets very involved. To explain everything that happened next would take as much space as her original posting. Since this happened to her, I would strongly suggest that you read her original post in its entirety. Just click on the title linked above. She discovered some surprising information on what it is legal for companies to do with automatic renewals and to expired or temporary credit cards.

What you need to know and to do:

1. Keep track of your subscriptions: How much they cost (to the penny) and when they run out.

2. Read the fine print when you sign up for any online subscription: What is their policy relating to automatic renewals, expired credit cards, temporary credit cards, and anything else that involves what come out of your wallet.

4. If you subscribe to NewpaperArchive.com (not to be confused with other websites like Archive.com), and are having trouble unsubscribing or are having your deadline coming up, you must read this blog.

1. The spelling of names was not standardized until relatively recently. Example: There are six surviving signatures written by William Shakespeare. Each one is spelled differently.

2. Transcribers. When you are using the search box of an online database like Ancestry or FamilySearch, there is always at least one person between you and the information you are seeking, the transcriber. This is the person who creates a printed name from an original handwritten record. It is easy to mistake individual letters. Try it sometime. Example: In colonial handwriting, the s can be written differently depending on where it appears. Another example is census records. Census takers were seldom, if ever, hired for their legible handwriting.

What do you do when you are having a problem finding an ancestor?

1. Find different spellings of the name. Check out surname societies online. Google your name of interest with the word “surname”. Surname societies may already have a list of various spellings (and misspellings) of the name.

2. Besides using a surname society, you can also ask friends how they would spell a name. You would be surprised at how many spellings you collect.

3. Keep a list. When you find a misspelling in a record, take note of it. Add it to your list.

4. You can use the Soundex system for a number of United States federal censuses. Soundex was created in 1935 for use with the 1880 census in conjunction with the new Social Security system. It looks like federal employees had as much trouble reading the handwriting on census records as genealogists do. Soundex takes vowels out of names and substitutes numbers for consonants. It pulls together names that sound alike and was created to help find people that the handwriting can make names difficult to pinpoint. It is far from foolproof, as are any of the subsequent systems developed to do the same thing. You can use it. But don’t rely on it. Find as many variants of a name as you can think of and then use them in your search box.

5. Use whole family reconstruction. This is especially true if you get too many hits with a common name. Add the names of parents, siblings, a spouse or children’s names if you have them, rather than just the name of the ancestor you are looking for. You can approach adding names in two ways. You can add everyone at once and delete members until you get a hit. Or you can add family members one at a time until you find what you are looking for. Remember, sometimes less is more.

6. Sometimes you can find a family using one member with an uncommon name. Once you find it, you can see if the rest of the family matches up. Example: One of my ancestors was named George Smith. Luckily he married a woman named Philomene who had a daughter also named Philomene. With other corroborating evidence, I had enough information to realize I had my grandmother’s family.

7. Remember, just because you have a very uncommon name, do not assume that only one person had that name in the time and location you are researching. It is possible that it is a family name passed down through different branches of a family. That is why checking for other family members or corroborating evidence is so important.

8. You may have the right person, but the wrong location. They may have moved and you will have to broaden your search.

Jasper, Margaret C. How to Change your Name. Dobbs Ferry, NY: Oceana Publications, 2005. 346.73 J31H This is just a reminder that on very rare occasions, ancestors do change their names. Usually when you can’t find someone, it is because they simply are not where you expect them to be or there has been a mistake in the transcription of a name.

After you have decided where you are going to put your information, you start collecting the material you are going to put into your files. The basics of genealogy are who, where, and when for births, marriages, and as you go back in time, deaths. But that’s only the skeleton of your family. You can include other information as well, such as family stories. You begin by writing down what you know about yourself and then your siblings. Next you go back to your parents and their siblings, then to your grandparents, as far back as you can remember. If you remember it, write it down. There are three forms that might help you figure out what you know and what you don’t. These are provided with links so you can print out what your need. There are forms forindividuals. for family groups, and for direct line ancestors. Take a look. You should find them useful.

Have you discovered that you have a number of gaps? Dates and places you don’t know? Names that you can’t remember? Your next step is to collect information from your relatives. Ask questions of your parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents and their siblings if they are still alive. If you are older, you can talk to cousins, nieces, and nephews. Some may be younger, but they may still have family stories you never heard or photographs you have never seen. Be prepared for all sorts of responses. You may encounter relatives who think you are wasting your time. Others will be curious, though maybe a little skeptical. And you may discover that there are others in your family with a genuine curiosity about their family history. Some may have collected family stories and/or family photographs. You may even find someone who is working on putting together a family tree or has in the past.

It is a good idea to take notes either during or as soon after talking to a relative as possible. Always include your name, the name of the person you talked to, how you are related, the date and the place you talked. Someday someone may pick up your research and they will need this information. And twenty or thirty years down the line, your memory may need a gentle nudge as well.

Sometimes you may want to actually sit down and interview a relative. You can take notes, but see if they are willing to be taped. In future years it will be a gift to hear their voice. Be prepared for “but I don’t have anything interesting to say. I don’t remember all that much. I haven’t done anything very interesting.” Trust me. In 99% of the cases they do, they will, and they have. But what do you ask them? How do you draw them out? This does not come naturally to most people. You might want to take a look at some of the books or websites I’ve listed below. You can usually find them at your local library or through your library’s Interlibrary Loan (ILL) service. Even if you want to buy it, it’s a good idea to take a look at a book first. Some books will work for you and others won’t. You may not save money. But you’ll have a better working library.

BOOKS

Hart, Cynthia. The Oral History Workshop: Collect and Celebrate the Life Stories of Your Family and Friends. New York: Workman, 2009. 907.2 H25O This work covers all the bases. It helps you prepare for an oral interview, and makes suggestions about the things you do once the interview is over, including transcribing and editing it. The center, Chapter 3, is comprised of all sorts of questions you could ask. (It helps to have those prepared in advance, in case you need all of them. A good interview is knowing when to just let your interviewee tell stories and when you need to guide the interview with questions.

The annual New England Family History Conference will be held on Saturday, March 26th, 2011 at the Franklin LDS chapel at 91 Jordan Road, Franklin, MA. Although I am not a member of the LDS (often referred to as Mormon) Church, I have been going to this conference for several years now. Everyone is welcome. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in genealogical research who lives within driving distance of Franklin. Click here for the list of classes.Click here for an overview of the entire program. Each participant can sign up for four classes. There is another bonus. The conference is free. It is an exciting selection and extremely difficult to choose. The only costs are a boxed lunch, if you choose to buy one, and the syllabus of the classes, if you would like a complete one printed up and given to you in your registration packet. Both costs are minimal. It is a good idea to register as early as possible. Classes can close up quickly. For more information click on the conference highlighted title in the first sentence above and Frequently Ask Questions here.

LDS has always been in the forefront of genealogical research. It’s members are extremely generous with their time, helping everyone from beginners to the most experienced, LDS and non-LDS alike. Their website is undergoing a major revision. They have an ongoing indexing project that is huge, staffed entirely by volunteers. To check out their new site, click here. To take full advantage of this new site, take a look at their instructions in pdf format hereand their interactive online guide here. If you like the old version and wish to use it again, click here. When you read the pdf, you will discover that there is still a large amount of material that is only available in the older version. Explore, enjoy, learn, discover.

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The Newton Genealogy Club

The Genealogy Club meets the second Wednesday of each month at 7:00 pm in the Special Collections Room of the Newton Free Library. Special Collections is on the first floor to your left as you are walking to the back of the library.

The club meets to share information on records and approaches for starting or extending participants’ genealogical research. Novices and experienced researchers are both welcome and encouraged to bring records and problems from their own research for discussion.

The coordinator of the club is Ginny Audet. Contact by email: NewtonGenealogyClub@gmail.com.